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The Morning After: Brunch at Frank at the AGO

Chef Anne Yarymowich delivers with a duck confit and frisee salad.

Frank's duck confit and frisee salad with haricots verts, croutons and duck confit, tossed with a mustard seed dressing and topped with a poached duck egg and crackling. (Ivy Knight / Special to the Star)

Mouth feel: Paying more for your cocktail than your main course may seem outrageous, but when you have a cocktail like the Pink Expression #10, featured on Frank’s menu inspired by the Abstract Expressionists exhibition on loan from MOMA, just hand over your credit card and be done with it.

The drink combines pink rhubarb, Tanqueray gin, ginger syrup and VQA sparkling to create a masterpiece in a champagne flute that would never be as controversial as the Rothko’s in the exhibit, which is on until September, but does aspire to be as breathtaking. This ethereal cocktail needs a dish that’s firmly rooted in the dirt and Chef Anne Yarymowich delivers with a salad of bitter frisee and radicchio, snappy haricots verts, sourdough croutons and earthy, fatty duck confit. This is tossed with a mustard seed dressing, topped with a poached duck egg and sprinkled with duck skin crackling. Duck skin crackling, people! Cut into the soft poached duck egg so the yolk mixes into the salad, making a big beautiful mess Jackson Pollock would be proud of.

The queue: No wait on a Saturday at 2 p.m.

The scene: You need to see this show while it’s on, if only to walk out imagining yourself splashing house paint over a giant canvas in your basement. So, since you have to go, make sure you go on a Saturday just in time for brunch.

The restaurant interior is reminiscent of a waiting room in a Stieg Larsson novel but the chairs are comfortable, the flower arrangements are beautiful and bounteous and the plates are cool. Service is very smooth, especially if you’re lucky enough to have the charmingly mustachioed Adrian as your server.

The drink: Pink Expression #10, $15

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